Political ideology has no meaning in the age of Trump

 

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary tells us that “politics” is

The art or science of government

The art or science concerned with guiding or influencing governmental policy

The art or science concerned with winning and holding control over a government

The key words here are “art” and “science.” There is certainly no “art” or “science” in politics anymore; that died out when Newt Gingrich took control of the Republican Party and set it up for someone like Donald Trump. In a 2018 edition of The Atlantic, McKay Coppins termed Gingrich as “The Man Who Broke Politics”:

During his two decades in Congress, he pioneered a style of partisan combat—replete with name-calling, conspiracy theories, and strategic obstructionism—that poisoned America’s political culture and plunged Washington into permanent dysfunction. Gingrich’s career can perhaps be best understood as a grand exercise in devolution—an effort to strip American politics of the civilizing traits it had developed over time and return it to its most primal essence.

We saw this in Gingrich declaring war on Bill Clinton when he became Speaker of the House, and Mitch McConnell doing the same during the Obama administration. There was no rhyme or reason to it; it was just to destroy the other party. There was no “governing philosophy” by Republicans, there was no “art” or “science” to what they were doing; it was just kill or be killed. It was the perfect set-up for a man like Trump; there was no more need for the “compromises” that things like “politics” required to maintain a civil society. It is just making the other guy look as bad as possible, blame him for every mistake even when you were the “party” most responsible—especially a president who was more fit to manage a strip club.

As if we didn’t know it already, there is no rhyme or reason with Donald Trump. He is apparently ruled not by any particular political or ideological “philosophy,” but by “gut feelings” and petty, narcissistic personal likes and dislikes. Being a “businessman,” he had no need for “compromise” or “politics”; it was about the “bottom line,” meaning “winning” by whatever means necessary. There had to be “profit” in doing anything, and during the Trump administration that meant doing whatever excited the adulation of a core group of fanatics who feasted on personal bigotries and paranoia. As for the rest, Trump cared little about those who were injured by his corrupt, unethical and immoral words and actions, because they were just natural-born “losers.”

Trump has fortunately suffered a few reverses of late; the principle peddlers of the most outrageous election conspiracies on Fox News—Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs and Jeanine Pirro—were forced in the face of defamation lawsuits to humiliate themselves by airing retractions. And then on Sunday the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post published a front page editorial urging Trump to “Stop the Insanity.”

The insanity was not just about the election conspiracies. When Trump vetoed the Defense Authorization  Act, it came as a bit of a shock to even his most ardent supporters in the House of Representatives, where the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, Rep. Mac Thornberry, urged his fellow Republicans to avoid making it a “political” issue and override Trump’s veto simply on its merits.  In truth, Trump doesn’t know or care what’s actually in the defense bill; he is merely holding it “hostage” because he wants Congress to do something that is completely unrelated to anything save his own perceived “defense”—he wants Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act repealed.

Naturally Trump—like many people—doesn’t even understand what Section 230 is actually about, and what it is meant to do. Trump seems to believe that it exists only to annoy him personally, allowing Internet platforms to harass him and put warning labels on his falsehoods and conspiracy theories. In reality all websites are “moderated” to a certain extent without Section 230, and Trump certainly does so on his own Twitter page, removing or banning commentary that he doesn’t care to hear. Section 230 merely states that “No provider or user of an interactive computer service” is liable for action “taken in good faith” to restrict material that might be considered “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.”  Some of us at least know that most public Wi-Fi access is restricted in this way.

Section 230 was originally intended to allow websites to create  “family friendly” areas of the Internet, and does not require political “neutrality” in restricting content, to avoid being hit by “frivolous” lawsuits from “bad actors.” Trump and those who see Section 230 as only a mechanism to put “warning labels” on their false or dangerous claims—or on the other side, preventing content providers from being sued for such content—simply do not understand what it was meant to do in the first place.

According to Section 230, platforms like Google, Facebook and Twitter are only “liable” for content they create; they are not “liable” for illegal or dangerous content that users provide as long as they take “reasonable” action to restrict access to such material, or apply warning labels.  Trump has repeatedly posted material that promotes falsehoods against the public welfare, and inciting dangerous responses; there is no doubt that his promotion of conspiracies and hate toward “ethnic” or religious groups has been the cause of “incitement,” and his continuing efforts to undermine the election with false claims of fraud also poses a danger to civil society.

In one of his PBS travelogues, Rick Steves went to Italy and Germany to examine “The Story of Fascism,” with Trumpworld clearly in mind; German political scientist Andreas Clemens provided insight into how a populist demagogue like Hitler managed to undermine Germany’s nascent democracy, which can easily be applied to Trump: “He repeated a lie endlessly, and he didn’t make it a small lie, he made it a big lie, and he kept hammering it into their heads. He also dumbed it down as much as possible,” providing simple solutions to complicated problems. It didn’t matter if what he said was dangerous; his most fanatical supporters were “entertained” by the “show.” Like Hitler, Trump is not “guided” by any particular ideology; he was a “messianic” megalomaniac who fed the masses with the most convenient “enemy” to blame for every problem.

So, we see that Trump’s vetoing of the defense bill was based on petty personal complaint and ignorance, not on any particular political “ideology.” And that brings us to that  can of worms of what exactly does political ideology have to do with the age of Trump. On one hand, Trump and his most fanatical base of supporters do not seem to be motivated by politics, but by petty personal considerations, usually of the “social” or racial variety—see Stephen Miller, whose whole existence seems to revolve around his personal distaste for Hispanics.

There can be little doubt that Miller was the Machiavellian behind Trump’s shocking announcement that he was not signing either the omnibus bill to avoid a government shutdown, as well as the COVID-19 stimulus package. How do we know this? Because only Miller would compose a speech in which its principle “whine” was that there was spending for foreign aid to Central American countries, without bothering to differentiate what spending package it was actually in.

When it was realized that House Republicans were not going to support the Trump/Miller call for the individual stimulus check bumped from $600 to $2,000 in any way, shape or form, Trump capitulated and signed both spending bills on Sunday, with the overriding  of his veto of the defense authorization to come shortly. It is worth noting that Trump’s “plan” had no basis in logic; A bigger check sounds great if you are living from paycheck-to-paycheck, or have no income at all; but as some economists are pointing out, $150,000 households don’t need a “stimulus” check, and will likely just leave it laying in the bank, while those who immediately spend the higher amount will likely cause “overheating” of the economy—which means that any too-fast short-term economic boost would likely lead to a harmful downturn.  But this wasn’t Trump thinking of long-term implications; angry that Republicans—at least in the Senate—were leaving him in their rearview mirrors, Trump just wanted to gum-up the works out of pure spite.

We are learning now that Texas Rep. Louis Gohmert, who arose from the “Tea Party” movement—which was simply a knee-jerk, racist response to the election of a black president—is “suing” Mike Pence to force him on Jan. 6 to use his alleged “authority” to throw out Biden’s electoral votes and replace them with Trump’s. This is the kind of insanity that the Post was talking about, but Trump once more sees this as a “loyalty” test to put Pence in an impossible situation.  If one is “confused” about why so many House Republicans behave like idiots it is because most of them were elected by the same kind of voters who find Trump so “appealing.” Such supporters may call themselves “Republican,” or vote for Republican Party, but it isn’t for “political” reasons, it is for social and “cultural” reasons. They just “hate” the “others” because they are “different.”

On the other hand, the “art and science” of politics doesn’t have much to do with what the “left” is doing at the present time. Being “left” isn’t so much a political philosophy, but simply being anti-Trump, regardless of actual political ideology; we see how while Trump has surrounded himself with “radicals,” Joe Biden has purposefully left out of his incoming administration anyone who is clearly of the ideological left, bringing in mostly “old hands” from the Obama administration; even the “new” blood,  Transportation nominee Pete Buttigieg, is better known for being a “moderate” and insensitive to black concerns as mayor of South Bend in the safely “red” state of Indiana. 

That Biden loaded up on women in his new administration has nothing to do with being “progressive” or “liberal” either, since none of them are known to be such; either he prefers the company of women (he’s a “handsy” kind of guy), or  being obsequious, or believing (like Trump) that they are more “loyal” and likely to be more “feisty” on news programs getting whatever point the administration wants to get across, especially if “alternate facts”  and “whataboutisms” are necessary.

Biden is simply not the “liberal” that Trump fanatics and Fox News calls him. He was not “bought and paid for” by “the liberals.” He was “bought and paid for” by voters who thought he was the “safe” choice, the “known quantity,” and in the end the only viable alternative to Trump once he was nominated. Ideology never entered into it. As unfit to be president as he was, Trump was still able to control a mob of voters who didn’t really care about “traditional” conservative “values,” but personal prejudices, bigotries and grievances—and Trump fed into that and from that because psychologically he was just like them. He is a populist in the worst sense of the word. 

Democrats still try to play the game, since unlike Republicans they are trying to curry favor with a much wider spectrum of voters, who are not easy to please whatever is done; but the fact that Biden is ignoring the “progressive” wing of the party means that there are “limits” to playing “politics” within his own party: he’d rather play with the Republicans, which of course is a fools’ errand, since Republicans don’t want to do any “politicking” with him or any Democrat.

Being “political” means actually believing in something, not just a knee-jerk reaction to what the other party is doing. I’m not actually sure I or anyone knows what Biden is actually “for,” although for the time being if it means overturning Trump’s mountain of executive orders (close to 200), that should keep him busy. But with a few exceptions in the U.S. Senate, there  should be no expectation of effort at “moderation,” which requires “politicking” from Republicans who are scared of what Gingrich created and what Trump has solidified—and they have only themselves to blame for not stopping it. 

What is left is Trump having mesmerized tens of millions of people by appealing to the absolute lowest common denominator of their psyches, their most elemental fears, hatreds and paranoia. In his Atlantic article, McKay noted Gingrich’s fascination with wild animals, and his belief that civil behavior was for “sissies”; he preferred the “politics” of wild beasts. And as we have seen too often, Trump acts no more rationally than a wild beast.